Grand Theft Auto Parodies

Of course, a game and franchise like this one has been widely parodied. It seems like it has been widely tried from The Simpsons to Lego. Here are an example from YouTube. Many of the parodies are the result of exhange.

Key Terms for Post Modern Media

Click on the image to enlarge

Click on the images to enlarge

Semiotics- the study of signs

We've been touching on some of this stuff in lessons: "the sign structures that we call culture". This is a great little video which illustrates signs as icons - indexes - symbols.

Video Games are bigger than DVDs and Music sales in the UK

Yikes! They are important, and as a growth market, they must be making their investors rich. Media-wise, outside of publishing, they are now the biggest sector of all.

Videogames pull in more cash than Hollywood movies

Last year will go down in history as the point at which the UK videogames industry pulled decisively away from cinema, recorded music and DVD sales to become the country's most valuable purchased entertainment market, with combined software and hardware sales topping the £4bn mark for the first time: more than DVD and music sales combined, and more than four times cinema box office takings.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/sep/27/videogames-hollywood

Narrative and Open Spaces in Grand Theft Auto

Try the brief audio in a left hand panel in on the Time site in which Dan Houser, the Vice President of Rockstar Leeds, explains how narrative in Grand Theft Auto "helps drive" and "serve the open spaces" and "the fake world" in the game. Notice also how the boundries between the cinema and video games are blurred and seem to overlap. Houser sees players engaging with "digital tourism" in his "fake", "open worlds": what gamers calls sandbox games or worlds.

New episodes are added to the game as add ons throughout the year. Much of the gangster element to this and previous games was influenced from the 1980s film, "Scarface". The game's "Liberty City" is intertextually like Batman's 'Gotham City' but perhaps even darker.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879194,00.html?iid=digg_share

Grand Theft Auto as Post Modern Satire on 21st Century Media

"Grand Theft Auto's" claim to be the first post modern video game to satirise the 21st century media, with its obsession with celebrity culture, money and status symbols, is examined here in this brief piece and accompanying video. It's an exercise in hyperbole.

http://gawker.com/5007492/the-media-universe-of-grand-theft-auto

And here is a story from the same source which reveals how a young player in Thailand was unable to tell the difference between reality and virtual reality because he carried out "a mission" from Grand Auto in real life!

http://gawker.com/5033305/murder-confirms-every-bad-stereotype-about-video-games

The comments on how the US government might react if a similar thing happened in the US is worth noting.

Postmodernism and the Video Game (Part One)

The links for the remaining parts of this article can be found at the foot of each part.

Postmodernism and the Video Game (Part One)

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Two studies which analyse "flow" and "immersion" in game-playing

A very useful study with well presented graphics representing the thoughts and views of game-players. The focus is on "immersion as a component of the gameplay experience".

http://www.uta.fi/~tlilma/gameplay_experience.pdf

Immersion, Flow And The Experiences Of Game Players

Grand Theft Auto Trailer

It gives a sense of the blurred boundries between the cinema and games. The graphics are also exceptional. Many of the song tracks are from the 80s and 90s. The song behind this trailer is "The Look" by Roxette from 1988. Games like this one are also influenced by 1980s gangster films such as Brian De Palma's "Scarface" from 1983.

Reviews of Grand Theft Auto IV

A few things are mentioned here that are not referred to in the review below. For instance, the use of the internet, including Face-Book and even dating on the game!

Most of the review above is mentioned here but there are a few extra items worth viewing. It's difficult to say which review is best.

Charlie Brooker's Games-Wipe on Video Games - Simulacrum

Charlie Brooker's take is always worth tuning in for. This is a wide-ranging study on video games as simulacrum and virtual reality. Watch out for references to Grand Theft Auto IV as this will be the focus of our second case study on post modern media.